My plan
Theme: Classroom communication
Goal #1: Classroom website (Up and ready for the start of the school year)
Date completed: August 10 (ongoing)
Goal #3: Edmodo
Continue:
QR code use (revisit the ISTE session information)
Edmodo: assignments weekly, have them include this on their planners so they know when to check
Theme: Sharing with colleagues
Goal #1: Include a tab on website that has information from TIG, NETA, and ISTE
Date completed: September 1
Continue:
Add new things I am using or hear about others using in classrooms.
Theme: Continue activities that follow up our Kindness Retreat visit
Goal #1: Post weekly character challenges using Youth Frontiers website
Date completed: October 1 and ongoing
Goal #2: "Catch" students being kind ("throw them a kindness boomerang"). Send home a boomerang note to each kid (about 2-3 per month).
Updates:
Theme: Student reign
Goal #1: Allow the students to "take reign" of one class period.
Date completed: November 3 or before
Updates:
Goal #1: Classroom website (Up and ready for the start of the school year)
Date completed: August 10 (ongoing)
- Weebly.com
- Include pages for "just students," "just parents," "just teachers," "school info.," etc.
- Include online book club for Golden Sower nominees
Goal #3: Edmodo
- Post video tutorials (educreations, khan academy, learnzillion) to help with homework questions or to give a preview of an upcoming lesson
- website up and running; sent home the link on a postcard as a welcome back to school
- videos/educreations/reminders on edmodo for help (exponents, layers of the earth)
- book club on Edmodo according to reading groups (will start second semester)
Continue:
QR code use (revisit the ISTE session information)
Edmodo: assignments weekly, have them include this on their planners so they know when to check
Theme: Sharing with colleagues
Goal #1: Include a tab on website that has information from TIG, NETA, and ISTE
Date completed: September 1
- apps
- websites
- tech tools
- I revised this a little and decided to just add these to my "Teachers Only" tab. I'm thinking of revising it again and instead of making it a list, I may make it a blog page so that I can add weekly tech tips or new apps and make the addition a little more obvious.
Continue:
Add new things I am using or hear about others using in classrooms.
Theme: Continue activities that follow up our Kindness Retreat visit
Goal #1: Post weekly character challenges using Youth Frontiers website
Date completed: October 1 and ongoing
Goal #2: "Catch" students being kind ("throw them a kindness boomerang"). Send home a boomerang note to each kid (about 2-3 per month).
Updates:
- I use the weekly character challenges that are automatically emailed to me as our "Motivation Monday." I created a "Motivational Speaker" job in my classroom. They are in charge of scanning the QR code that is connected to the motivation page of our website. They read it to the class, talk about what it means to them, then are assigned to catch the kids doing these challenges throughout the week. These kids are awarded kindness boomerangs. We also have a new school-wide character plan called "bucket filling." I incorporated this with my boomerangs and put locker signs up that say "I'm a bucket-filler!" I also allow the kids to fill out bucket-filler cards when others are kind to them. I draw monthly from these student nominations for a student of the month.
- We watched the video of our leader Sam from the kindness retreat. We also talked about ICI (Interrupt, Compliment, Invite away) as our way of helping others in a bullying situation.
Theme: Student reign
Goal #1: Allow the students to "take reign" of one class period.
Date completed: November 3 or before
- Put into small groups
- Have them discuss what they think we should cover during that class period
- Rank the ideas, 1 being the first activity we want to try
- Allow students to teach the class (use Edmodo for posting dates for each activity)
- Evaluate: 3-5 question survey of class period (Edmodo)
Updates:
- Reviewing graphs-kids had the idea of making their own surveys and graphing the data. I allowed them to take this and run! They could work in pairs or on their own, they had to pick a topic according to the age level they were surveying and make an appropriate survey to hand out. The next step will be to take the survey data and turn it into a graph to display. The kids want to either make pic collages displaying their graphs or create a whole "poster" collage for the hallway.
- The kids created their graphs using this website. I did have one student choose to create their graph using grid paper and poster board. I like how this happened naturally rather than me prompting them to come up with a plan.